


Something So Perfect

by wangler



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Kid Fic, Mental Health Issues, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Stilinski Family Feels, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 00:28:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wangler/pseuds/wangler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott McCall meets his best friend at the vending machine on the fourth floor of Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital on a Saturday night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something So Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> Vague spoilers for Teen Wolf 3b up to 3x18.
> 
> Mostly just working out my Scott and Stiles are brothers for life feelings.
> 
> Send help.

**2003**

Scott McCall meets his best friend at the vending machine on the fourth floor of Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital on a Saturday night.

He'd rather be at Chuck E Cheese but his dad had to pick up an extra shift and his mom is already working late and he's stuck watching boring TV in the waiting room by the nurse's station and all he wants is some candy. Even if it's giant vending machine candy and not the cool candy necklaces he wanted to earn by playing Skee Ball for two hours straight.

"I call the Reese's," a kid says to him, right as he's dialing B-7. The last Reese's falls into the tray.

"It's mine," Scott says. He recognizes the boy from school, but they're not in the same third grade class. "I put the money in already."

"Well I want it."

"No." Scott tries to sound firm. His mom's been talking to him about bullies and how you have to be firm. He's not sure what firm means exactly, but it's somewhere between mean and scared.

Firm doesn't work. The kid pushes him to the side and grabs the Reese's from the tray.

"Dude!" Scott grabs his wrist and they start fighting. Not really fighting like on the cartoons his mom says he's not supposed to copy ever -- but the way he pushes and pulls with other kids when they're all trying to be line leader at the same time. They bump against the front of the machine and it's kind of loud and Scott hopes he's not going to get in trouble again like he already did yesterday for trying to surf down the stairwell on a food tray.

Scott's inhaler falls out of his pocket, and right when he hears the click of plastic hitting the floor, he accidentally kicks it under the vending machine. It really sucks because he's already out of breath from being angry and feeling weird about fighting.

He must make a sad face because the kid stops yanking his shirt and says, "What's wrong?"

"I gotta get my inhaler," Scott says, wheezing a little.

"Are you sick?" The other kid's eyebrows scrunch up.

"Just asthma." Scott coughs against the tightness in his chest. "Not hospital sick."

"Hang on."

Scott stands there, rubbing the top of his belly, as the kid drops to the floor and squirms halfway under the vending machine. He comes out covered in dust bunnies, with a smear of dirt against his cheek, and the inhaler in his hand. He wipes the inhaler clean using his shirt. "Here you go."

Scott takes it, and does two puffs, holding each breath in like he's supposed to. He looks down, waiting for the puffer to work, and sees the Reese's on the floor, squashed and messed up from being stepped on.

"Are you better?" the kid asks, getting right in his face like doctors do. He has big eyes, like they don't really fit in his face. "Are you not sick anymore?"

"I'm okay," Scott says. He tucks the inhaler deep into his pocket. "The Re--"

"I'm Stiles. You're Scott. I'm in Ms. Murphy's class and you're in Mrs. Roger's class."

"You were on my bus last year," Scott says, remembering the way Stiles sat in the front row talking to the driver the whole time, braver with grownups than he was.

"My mom's not home after school now so my dad picks me up," Stiles says. "Or a deputy. I get to ride in a cruiser."

Scott frowns, something in Stiles' expression making his stomach feel empty. It seems like a bad time to say, "The Reese's got smashed, dude."

"Oh." Stiles looks down briefly, and kicks it under the vending machine. "Hey you wanna see a dead body?"

"Whoa." Scott pats his pocket to make sure the inhaler is snug there. "Yeah."

***

When her shift ends, it takes Melissa McCall twenty minutes to find her missing son.

After fifteen minutes of searching, she's flat out running, dodging the evening janitorial shift's huge carts and skidding where the floors are still wet. She's already had him called on the intercom and every nurse's station knows to look out for him and there's been no sign.

It's not like Scott's a baby. Someone could snatch him from the hospital without setting off alarms. Someone could take him. He could be gone.

The worry becomes so big, so encompassing, that when she finally sees him, crouched down in a basement hallway next to a long line of cabinets, the first thing she does is shout, "Scott Esteban McCall! What the hell are you doing down here?" She wants to shake him, so she puts her hands on her hips.

Then she hears muffled sounds.

"Is that?" She leans forward. "Scott. Did you let a dog in here?"

"He won't come out," Scott says. "We didn't even go, Mom. I promise. We just looked at the sign. I can't even see through the window, I promise. He just got -- he just got --"

"Didn't go where, baby?" Melissa crouches beside her son, putting one arm around his bony shoulders. The anger is gone, whisked away by the faint wheeze on his breath and the sheen in his big brown eyes.

She reaches into his pocket and guides his inhaler toward his mouth, but he shakes his head quickly and says, "I got it already, Mom. Um. The m-morgue."

"Oh, Scotty. You know better than that." No one ever told her that parenting would mean pinballing from one emotion to the next at dizzying speeds. She rubs her forehead and studies the cabinet, where the whimpering has grown softer.

It's not an animal. It's a child. "Were you trying to impress a friend?"

"It was his idea!"

"All right." Melissa raises her voice so it will carry through the cabinet door. "Kiddo, you're going to have to come out. They'll be steam cleaning the basement floors in about ten minutes, and it's very loud. If we're being honest, even I find it a little scary."

The cabinet creaks open and Melissa doesn't have a chance to get a good look at what's coming at her before there's a scrawny boy in her lap, his arms grasping her so tight it makes her ribs ache.

"That's Stiles," Scott says, speaking up over the sound of muffled sobs. "He used to be on the bus but now his mom isn't home so he rides in a police car. We were just gonna look, Mom. But he freaked out. I didn't freak out. It was his idea!"

Melissa's anatomy and physiology classes taught her exactly where to find every organ in the human body. She's held a human heart in her hand -- knows right where it belongs. So she knows her heart isn't sinking, not really.

But it still hurts.

"Oh," she says. Her fingers card into Stiles' hair and she rocks him gently as his tears dampen her shoulder.

Scott watches her closely, giving a small nod of encouragement that loosens a little of the ache of knowing what the boy in her arms is crying about.

**

Claudia Stilinski wakes up when a nurse turns on a dim light beside her bed. She glances at the shadows first -- always first. She can't remember why she's checking them or what she's looking for, but it feels very important.

"Mrs. Stilinski? I'm Melissa, one of the nurses." Claudia squints at the pretty woman's name tag to confirm, but the letters are just daisies, one after another. She can't remember what letters were supposed to look like.

The nurse places a child in her bed. He has sharp elbows and long eyelashes and he needs a hair cut.

"He fell asleep." Melissa takes a loud breath that makes her sound nervous. "I called your husband -- he's in traffic. It'll only be about 30 more minutes, but I thought you might like... I thought he'd. Well I thought he could stay here."

The child's cheeks are damp, but he's breathing slowly and evenly, his face a gentle mask of serenity. He's the most beautiful thing Claudia's ever seen. "Is he mine?" she asks, hardly daring to wish for something so perfect.

It takes Melissa so long to answer that Claudia begins to worry that she's done something wrong. She wraps one arm around the boy, and he pushes closer in his sleep, turns his sharp chin to her chest and shudders a soft sigh.

"Yes," Melissa says quietly. Claudia glances up to see Melissa sweeping her thumb along her lashes. "He is."

"I'm glad." Claudia's tears are hot and startling. She exhales shakily, trying to keep them quiet, so she won't wake the child. "Oh, I'm glad."

Melissa doesn't leave them alone. Claudia is glad for that, too.

***

Stiles Stilinski reads every National Geographic in the waiting room and re-arranges the chairs three times before his dad says he can play outside if he stays out of the street. His mom is busy for a bunch of hours having more pictures of her brain taken in the machine that looks like a rocket ship.

Mrs. McCall walks by on her way into the hospital and gives him a big hug -- even bigger than the ones he gets from his teachers lately. She says to go around the corner to the employee parking lot where Scott is skateboarding.

"Is that hard?" Stiles asks, feeling shy and hoping Scott doesn't think he's a weird baby for what happened the weekend before.

"No." Scott immediately skates right into sign and flies off the board. He lands on his hands and knees. "A little."

"Can I try?" Stiles asks, watching Scott pick gravel off his palms.

Scott looks up at the hospital like he thinks it's watching him. "Yeah, just like. Don't get hurt." He takes his helmet off and squishes it down onto Stiles' head. It feels warm and sweaty, and Stiles squirms while Scott fastens the chin strap.

The parking lot isn't like the roller skating rink. And a skateboard is a lot harder than rollerblades. It wobbles and tries to get away, and the wheels catch on the bumpy asphalt, but Scott is pretty strong and he lets Stiles hang onto him tightly as they inch in a slow circle around the handicapped spaces.

When he catches a wheels on a rock, the board stops and he keeps going. Scott tries to steady him but they both end up tumbling onto the sidewalk. It's Stiles' fault, so he twists and lets Scott land on top of him. The helmet thuds against the concrete and Scott's head thuds against Stiles's nose and they both start laughing.

"Your nose is bleeding," Scott says. "Dude! It made a bubble." He has a funny giggle that makes Stiles feel happy.

Stiles wipes his nose on his shirt and grins at the big red line it makes. He scrambles up, dragging Scott with him. "Come on! I wanna go again."

***  
 John Stilinski stands at the window with a copy of his wife's brain scan in his hand. The paper is wrinkled in his clenched grip, damp from the sweat of his palms. It's a sunny day. A pretty day.

Even though the thick, tinted windows, the heat soothes his clammy skin. It would be simple, he thinks, to be a tree. To stand tall against the tide of mortality.

He watches his eight-year-old son roll around in the grass outside, and does the ugly math in his head.

**2011**

Scott McCall finds his best friend sitting against a headstone at Beacon Hills Cemetery. It's a cold night, and Stiles' hands are trembling.

"Make room," Scott says, pressing close and hoping some of his own heat will transfer through Stiles' clothes.

Stiles leans into him, heavy with exhaustion, and Scott tries not to think or hear or smell but everything about Stiles is scared sad empty hurting and it's wrong. A cold weight, Stiles feels like he doesn't want to move anymore, like he's too tired to fight.

Scott has nothing to fight, but the wolf in him hums, alerted to danger, as if there's something lurking in the shadows.

They've always been able to volley need back and forth. Stiles sneaking out when things got weird at home after his mom passed. Scott packing their bags to run away to the Preserve when his parents started fighting more -- just assuming that Stiles would come with him, because they'd always be together. No matter what. Bad grades and sleepovers and jerks at school and exams and girlfriends or lack thereof. Lacrosse and werewolves and dead friends and real life bad guys and nightmares.

"Scott," Stiles says, shaking. It's a warning and a plea.

Scott takes Stiles' cold hand in his own. He isn't going to let it be a goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to keep this in the [Someone Else's Child](http://archiveofourown.org/works/926192) continuity but I'm not sure I achieved that.


End file.
